I Built a Collaborative Book Platform Where the Community Decides What Gets Published - No Admins, No Gatekeepers
Written in Go. Runs on SQLite. Authors own their files. Forever. Forty-two years ago, I started with an Amiga 500 and no manual. Last week, I shipped ForgeCrowdBook — a platform where books live on...

Source: DEV Community
Written in Go. Runs on SQLite. Authors own their files. Forever. Forty-two years ago, I started with an Amiga 500 and no manual. Last week, I shipped ForgeCrowdBook — a platform where books live on Codeberg, GitHub, or IPFS, and the community pins what gets featured. No database server. No password hell. No platform lock-in. Here's the idea — and here's where I need your help. The Problem with Publishing Platforms Every writing platform eventually becomes a gatekeeper. Either an algorithm decides what gets seen, or an admin team moderates what exists, or a VC-backed company decides the rules change next quarter. Authors pour their work into systems they don't own. Take WordPress. It powers 43% of the web and it's genuinely impressive — but running it means: a PHP server, a MySQL database, a caching layer (because otherwise it's slow), a plugin for security, a plugin for backups, a plugin for SEO, and a hosting bill that grows with traffic. Your content lives in a database you probably